“Lichfield District Council have been publishing open data for a while now, and it seems a good fit to put on a day where we can showcase the data we have published, as well as encourage people to do something with it,” said council webmaster Stuart Harrison.

“We’re not precious though, and if something is built using other public data, we’ll be just as happy!”

The details:

What?Scraperwiki, the award-winning new screen scraper and data mining tool, funded by 4iP and Lichfield District Council are putting on a one day practical hack day* in Lichfield, Staffordshire at which web developers and designers (hackers) will pair up with journalists and bloggers or anyone with an interest in media and communications (hacks) to produce a number of projects and stories based on public data. It’s all part of the ScraperWiki UK & Ireland Hacks and Hackers tour.

Who’s it for? We hope to attract ‘hacks’ and ‘hackers’ from all different types of backgrounds – across programming, media and communications.
What will I get out of it? The aim is to show journalists how to use programming and design techniques to create online news stories and features; and vice versa, to show programmers how to find, develop, and polish stories and features. To see what happened at our past events in Liverpool and Birmingham visit the ScraperWiki blog.

How much? NOTHING! It’s free, thanks to our sponsors, Lichfield District Council and Journal Local.

What should I bring? We would encourage people to come along with ideas for local ‘datasets’ that are of interest. In addition we will create a list of suggested data sets at the introduction on the morning of the event but flexibility is key for this event. If you have a laptop, please bring this too.

So what exactly will happen on the day? Armed with their laptops and WIFI, journalists and developers will be put
into teams of around four to develop their ideas, with the aim of
finishing final projects that can be published and shared publicly. Each team will then present their project to the whole group. Overall winners will receive a prize at the end of the day.

*Not sure what a hack day is? Let’s go with the Wikipedia definition: It “an event where developers, designers and people with ideas gather to build ‘cool stuff'”…

[…] Lichfield, sponsored by Journal Local, in partnership with Lichfield District Council, and part of Scraperwiki’s UK & Ireland tour. It allows web developers and designers (hackers) to ‘pair up with journalists and bloggers […]